usage of formula editor
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Registered Member 
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I need formula editor in my daily editing work. The one with libreoffice is not so friendly but is the only one I can use in linux before I installed calligra suite. I found there is a formula editor in calligra words, but don't know how to edit formula with it. Could you give some advices on how to use it. Thanks
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Registered Member
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Hi! I think the formula editor of Calligra is not yet ready for normal usage as it still lacks many layouting features and is complicated to use.
However I'll try to explain how to use it to enter the term "a^2+b" In the "Add Shape" docker, select "formula" and click somewhere on the page. Double-click on the newly created shape to activate the formula editing mode. You will see a cursor inside a blue rectangle. In the formula editing tool select "insert superscript" from the menu. You will see another blue rectangle appearing. Click inside the first rectangle and type "a" Use the arrow keys to put the cursor into the second rectangle and type "2" Use the arrow keys to go to the end of the formula and type "+" Press the right arrow key once Type "b" Hope this helps! |
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KDE Developer
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There is a GSoC project going on that tries to improve the formula shape and tool.
If you want to help out I suggest maybe contacting us on irc #calligra |
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Registered Member
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Formula editor is indeed not very usable in Calligra Words.
An alternative is using TeXmacs (www.texmacs.org). I experience it as the most productive way to produce even complex mathematical equations. Typing " $$a^2+b " and you are done with the example. Maybe Calligra can implement the equation editor is a similar way. Johan |
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Moderator
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The formula shape is indeed not very useful as it is. There is a Google Summer of Code project that is aimed at improving it. There already are improvements in the layout and rendering and some work has been done on the editing too.
Texmacs does sound interesting but the problem is that parsing of tex is not a trivial task. Do you know if there is any code for translating TeX math expressions into MathML? If there was, we could easily incorporate it and have a pretty good formula editor pretty quickly. |
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Registered Member
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@ingwa
I don't about a separate translator to Mathml. From what I understood TeXmacs itself does not use TeX as the native format. TeXmacs itself has converter to/from xml. Using the example a^2+b it gives the following:
Maybe this helps |
Registered Member
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I would love to be able to just type the LaTeX formula syntax then have the formula editor render it. The GUI right now is a bit clunky and the formulas are small and the focus changes so it is hard to type it in and it doesn't work well to use the mouse to click the status. A good gui is needed and is key, but for power users would like a command syntax like libreOffice but not creating a new one just reuse LaTeX. Wikipedia uses LaTeX for the math formulas and it is being used in other KDE apps like telepathy-kde. Now if I could just type $$ x /in y$$ and have the formula just render after the last $$ it would really speed up my workflow in taking notes and writing math equations in Calligra. And since it would be using a standard that is used in other programs and projects(wikipedia, telepathy-kde) more people would be able to take advantage of it. GUI wise the old KFormula had one of the Best formula editing GUIs the new interface will be just as good if the issues stated above are fixed. I also think that if they grouped the symbols in the same way that Kile does(not copy the tabbed interface but just use the gui that it has now just group it in the same way that Kile does) it would be easier add symbols. Also if the command + Gui approach would be implemented having the command show up in the tooltip when the mouse hovers over the symbols in the symbol selection popup would help novices learn the commands quicker. Now this is somewhat unrelated but would be awesome if there was a cantor shape in which you put in a formula and have cantor make a plot(using its backends like sage, octave, R or Kalgebra) which gets put into the document.
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Registered Member
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Couldn't Calligra use itex2MML to convert LaTeX to MathML (like Abiword)?
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Moderator
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matlab/latex style input is indeed on the radar, it is actually already partly implemented in a branch (at least for matlab). For latex, I would have wished for a library that can do latex->mathml and mathml -> latex , but it does not seem to exist, so yes, itexToMML is a possibility for the support of latex syntax.
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